Finally. 7 years after the fact. 8 years ago I started recording for my first all Halo 1 montage titled ‘Retrospect’. After a month and a half of recording (the hard drive struggle was real) I would release all of the clips I captured and start over. This video, ‘Roots’, follows that same trend. Through these seven years, a lot has changed in my life. That is what set back this video as I’m sure you’re well aware. I wanted to release a project to be proud of, something that I could say I did on my own. I’ve had good luck in passing off my content to various people to edit in the past for me. This time, however, I knew I wasn’t able to let just anyone edit this footage. I felt that I wouldn’t be able to find someone with the technical skill editing wise coupled with the understanding of the game to try to showcase the gameplay how I wanted it to be displayed. In this specific scenario, the editor is more important than the gameplay. Why? What the fuck would I say something like that for? Because the editor gives the entire story about the footage that’s being highlighted. He would have sole control over how it would be presented. So, 2 years ago I started trying a bit more in my personal edits (despite not sharing a damn thing with the community). I decided I wanted to learn the software necessary to edit a video the way I had envisioned it in my mind. That’s when I picked up After Effects. Then Audition. Then a few others that you all are well familiar with. Then, I started thinking about how I wanted to present the gameplay. With this video being released years after major interest in the series had died off, I wanted to make something to serve as a stamp during my time with the game. Throughout those two years I started learning about and creating my own upsampling methods to try to better preserve and showcase the footage that I had recorded and struggled to maintain over the years. I legitimately went through four (yes, 4) hard drives during this time. Unfortunately, I did lose a lot of footage. The positive? I hadn’t looked at it in so long I couldn’t tell you what it was that I lost so I wasn’t all that upset. Besides, I should’ve released it back in 2007 when it was original planned. Then, THF’s Movie Comp was announced. Then, MCC. My plans completely changed from that point forward. It’s not really worth going into at this point in my opinion. I’m sure some of you would be interested in hearing about it but aside from my being burnt out from this project, I just want to share it with you.

Notes:

• Spent the last 18 hours finishing this up
• All footage took place using XBC and XLink
• Gameplay is from 2007 and was recorded in just under 2 months
• All 3rd person footage recorded since the contest was announced using Halo PC and H1 on MCC
• After 4 years getting burned out from editing to songs, I finally found this one 6 months ago (just in time for the contest)
• Spent 1 year cleaning, scaling, and denoising the footage prior to beginning this edit just to hear people on YouTube complain about quality.
• Despite releasing this today, after 7 years of delay, I still felt I was rushed. Weird.

I genuinely believe I will never face as many technically challenging tasks that I have in trying to create this montage. Although I was not able to get my idea across 100%, I am damn proud of the effort I put into this, my first real edit. I hope you all enjoy – but most importantly, to those of you over the years asking about this video time and time again, thank you so much for your patience and friendship. I hope the wait was worth it.

Special thanks to Crest for audio assistance not related to this video and also thanks again to PJ Bia and Lat3ksi for their timely panoramic/3rd person assistance. Keep an eye out for Roots 2 coming winter 2022.

Update [1/8]: I finally managed to get Roots to 720p60 and updated this post with a download link. If you happen to view it, please let me know what you think! I literally worked years to achieve this resolution and I am beyond excited even though I'm sure I went about it all the wrong way. Here's to learning!

Damn dude, I honestly didnt expect this clean of an edit. Color me impressed, that's tricky to do when throwing in angles from fancy XB1 footage. Making masking type transitions look good with old SD ghost ass POV footage was always pretty tricky.
Transitions were dope, Gameplay was sweet. I liked the sprees, we don't see those much in montages anymore and with H1 spawns its just cool as shit.
What I especially liked was the soundtrack, maybe I'm just projecting/reading into it too much but it really fucking nails what I'd imagine a project like this would feel like for you. Which made me very involved in it.
The Elmo shout out and mentions at the end made this even more personal and shows your character and appreciation for the community, props.

the 3:35 synch with the brightness/flashes made me think of your h2m6 haha.

With Lat3ski's Custom Edition montage and now this, H1 Videos once again stand shoulder to shoulder with the other halo's.

Okay so when i think of Halo tages each game always has a select few videos that come to mind that reflect everything i love about the series, this video is seriously on point with Rippons final for me, if not better, just the best display of CE mastery i have seen, cannot get over some of those clips, and its not even stuff like the Damnation double /stick to snipe across map, Battle Creek whip noscope etc (which are jaw dropping btw) but its the way you present your knowledge in the game with the spawn trapping on Prisoner and the spawn sticks on Damnation, its fucking insane. Remember that French guy in Retrospect who was commenting on the skill levels in CE and how you get fucked bad by good people, this video was the perfect evidence to that and i cant thank you enough for making it.

Also to note i loved what you did with the editing and audio work, angles and general remastering.
/endofdickride but this was godlike

No words can describe the gravity and the flawless execution of this project. Absolutely amazing to see such crisp and clean transitions clip to clip. The raw material was unbelievable and the final product is something that'll be re watched by many, over and over.